Your Will Be Done

Intro

There are a lot of things in this world that one would consider dangerous.

skydiving

deep sea diving

bungie jumping

race car driving

trying to win an argument with your wife...

The list goes on. And why do we consider these things dangerous? Because of the potential for the outcome to not be pleasant.

There is risk involved. Doing dangerous things means that something could go wrong. That suffering could result.

So why do we do dangerous things?

Necessity

There are certain jobs that must be done that are dangerous. There isn’t an option of saying no thanks, they must be done.

I think of these lineman who work on these high tension power lines. That is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. But if we want to live in a society that uses electricity, it must be done.

Reward

Sometimes we do dangerous things not because we have to, but because while there is the potential for for bad things to happen, there is also the potential for a great reward.

Whether it is an adrenaline rush, the satisfaction of overcoming your fears, or perhaps there is a great discovery that lies on the other end of the danger.

In any case, we risk our personal safety and conquer our fear because of the hope that we will achieve something that is worth the risk in the end.

Now, considering all of this, I want to ask you this morning. Have your ever considered your prayer life to be dangerous?

Yes, your prayer life. When you pray, do you think about what you are asking God to do as dangerous or risky?

You see for most of us, those two words; prayer and danger do not go together.

God is our refuge

God is our safe place

God is who we go to when we are scared, hurting, or stressed out.

How could prayer be dangerous?

Yet, when you study the scriptures you are going to find example after example of God’s people praying dangerous prayers.

They prayed prayers that were deeply personal, prayers that were practical, and prayers for protection.

Sometimes their prayers were offered as a simple request to a loving God, and other times they yelled at God in agony and frustration.

Their prayers were honest, desperate, fiery, gutsy, real, and at times even dangerous.

Yet so often, if you are like me, we find ourselves praying these safe prayers. It isn’t that we don’t believe in prayer, we do.

But we get stuck in a rut with our prayers where we find that we are praying about the same struggles and the same requests. In the same way. At the same time. If you even pray at all.

Lord bless my food

God be with me today

God keep my kids safe

God help me make the right choices today.

None of these things are bad, but it is more of a routine than a relationship

And if what I am describing is what you experience, you know you should probably pray more, with more passion, and more faith.

You want to talk to God and to listen to him, to share intimate conversation like you would your spouse or best friend, but you aren’t sure how.

So your prayers remain safe, flat, dull, predictable, stale, even boring.

So instead of prayer being the life altering, earth shaking, world changing practice that it could be, it is simply part of your safe routine.

A few weeks ago I read through a daily devotion called dangerous prayers. It was written by Craig Groeschel, lead pastor of Life Church and it really brought to light some of what I am talking about this morning.

So what I want to do is take a few weeks together and talk about dangerous praying and why it should be something all of us are doing.

Because while there is a risk involved with the kind of praying I am talking about, there is also the potential for a great reward for those who are brave enough to pray like this.

Our greatest example

One doesn’t have to look very hard in the Bible to see dangerous prayers being prayed. In fact, Jesus gives us one the greatest examples you are going to find.

In Matthew we read one of the most famous prayers ever prayed, in fact most people, even those who don’t go to Church can recite some of not all of this prayer.

That is unless you were the recent Jeopardy contestant who has been getting roasted pretty hard online for getting an answer wrong about it recently.

I am referring to the Lord’s Prayer. But before we get to the prayer itself, let’s look at the context for why Jesus is even talking about prayer in the first place.

Matthew 6:5:8 NLT 5 “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. 6 But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

7 “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. 8 Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!

This particular teaching was part of Jesus’s famous sermon on the mount. Here he is specifically teaching about prayer and fasting.

He prefaces what he is about to teach regarding prayer by first addressing the attitude of the person praying.

And this is important because so often, when we pray, I wonder if what we are doing is more out of habit or routine than it is about doing what Jesus says and going to a quiet place, getting rid of the distractions and noise and having a conversation with our heavenly Father.

I wonder if the reason our prayers are so safe sometimes is because we don’t really know what to pray for because the relationship has become a routine.

A routine mind you that we barely carve any time out for. Oh, I have to get my prayers in, let me quickly go down my 5 minute list of praying for my food, thanks for all my blessings, keep my family and I safe, forgive me if I have sinned, in Jesus name amen.

That may not be the same thing as babbling or repeating the same words over and over again, but it does sound a lot like repeating the same predictable prayers over and over again.

And if we aren’t careful those predictable prayers will be come empty and void of any real faith. Our prayers become more like the message you hear when you get someone’s voicemail.

“Sorry I missed your call, please leave your name and message after the beep and I will get back to you”

And like the voicemail, no matter how many times you call you will hear the same thing over and over again, our prayer can start to do the same thing.

“Dear God thank you for this day, please keep me and my family safe, bless this food to our bodies amen.”

Jesus is saying that isn’t prayer. Prayer, real prayer is taking the time to get alone with God and talking to him.

Really talking to him. Giving him thanks, sharing our fears, concerns, even frustrations. Asking him to intervene and listening to what he has to say in return.

Then he gives them an example of prayer.

Matthew 6:9-13 NLT 9 Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. 10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today the food we need, 12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

There are a lot of things we could pull out of this prayer and talk about. But what I want to focus on is the part of this prayer that I believe is the most dangerous part.

Where it Gets Dangerous

Verse 10 of this prayer contains something that all of us have repeated on numerous occasions. But I wonder sometimes if we really understand what we are actually asking God to do.

Matthew 6:10b NLT May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Listen, when you pray this prayer, do you really mean it? Do you really want God’s will, no matter what it is, to be the thing that happens?

You know, Jesus didn’t just give us this example in prayer, he lived it out. Everything about his life on earth was motivated by his desire to do his father’s will, no matter the cost.

It isn’t loud, length, and perfectly worded prayers that move God. Rather it is the simple, real, and heartfelt. But make no mistake, simple is not the same thing as safe.

Jesus never asked us to do something he himself wasn’t willing to do. He said in his sermon on the mount that we should pray for God’s will to be done.

That’s easy when God’s will aligns with our own. But what about when God’s will is the opposite of what we want.

Jesus, the son of God prayed one of the most vulnerable and dangerous prayers of submission in the garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus, being God in the flesh knew what was ahead of him. He knew that soon he would be arrested, tortured, and crucified unto death.

He was about to experience one of the most excruciating and brutal of all human experiences known to man.

But more than that was the fact that soon God the father would pour out the cup of his wrath against sin upon him.

That Jesus would be the object of his father’s wrath because of the sin guilt that he was about about take upon himself so that he could pay the penalty for it.

And in a moment of honesty and vulnerability, Jesus prayed a very simply yet dangerous prayer.

Luke 22:41-42 NLT 41 He walked away, about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

What I am about to experience Father, I don’t want to go through it. My will is that we find another way to redeem humanity. To escape the torture, and to avoid your wrath. But at the end of the day my will is not what matters. I want yours to be done, no matter what.

Could you and I, if left to face even a fraction of what Jesus went through, pray that prayer? Do we really want God’s will to be done in our lives?

This is a dangerous prayer because we don’t know what price God may ask us to pay in order to see his will done.

Yeah, we say let your will be done, but do we really mean it?

It’s like when Katelyn says to me, what do you think about hanging that picture over our couch? She doesn’t really care what I think. I have just learned in 16 years of marriage that what she is really saying is, hang that picture above the couch.

We say, God let you will be done, but what we are really saying is let your will be done as long as it aligns with my own.

Quit Playing it Safe

For a lot of people, prayer is like buying a lottery ticket, a chance at a life here on earth that is problem free, stress free, or pain free.

For others, prayer is a sentimental routine like reciting your favorite song lyrics or nursery rhyme.

And for others, prayer is something you do because you will feel even guiltier if you don’t.

But none of these prayers reflect the life Jesus came to give us. Instead he calls us to leave everything and follow him.

He calls us to a life of faith, not a life of comfort. Instead of coming to him for a safer, easier, stress-free life, the Son of God challenges us to...

Risk loving others more than ourselves.

Instead of indulging our daily desires, he calls us to deny them for something eternal.

Instead of living what we want, he tells us to pick up our cross daily and follow his example.

When we are seeking to communicate with God in real, vulnerable, and intimate prayer, he isn’t wrapping us in a bubble of spiritual safety.

Instead he bursts our what’s-in-it-for-me bubble and invites us to trust him when we don’t know what he will do next.

That’s what makes this kind of praying so dangerous, because of the unknown.

And some days you are going to feel blessed while others you will face challenges, opposition, and persecution.

But every moment of dangerous prayer will be filled with his presence.

Your prayers matter

How you pray matters

What you pray matters

You prayers, move God.

So lets quit playing it safe and start praying dangerously. And let’s start with asking God to let his will be done in our lives, not matter what.